SE5 Forum for Camberwell’s campaign to re-open Camberwell Train Station continues!

Bid for Department of Transport’s ‘Restoring our Railways’ Ideas Fund now at second stage.  

Please Retweet your Support!

As many of you know, the campaign for a re-opened Camberwell train station has been going on for some years now – thanks to the ongoing support from all sections of the local community, major stakeholders such as the hospitals, institutions and University of the Arts London, Southwark Council and our local MPs Helen Hayes and Harriet Harman, among many others who support the case for a station. 

 Now SE5 Forum is continuing its campaign to re-open Camberwell train station with a bid to the Department of Transport’s Restoring our Railways Ideas Fund.

We now need your help again. Please show your support for our bid to the Department of Transport’s Restoring our Railways Ideas Fund before the panel reviews the bids by the end of July. As this was a last-minute bid and we are short on time, we can’t do an extensive campaign but are asking, in the first instance, for some show of support on our social media.

Please support us on Twitter by retweeting (and commenting on) our Tweet here @se5forum

You can also like our post on Facebook here.

Or drop us an email atadmin@se5forum.org.uk

Southwark News has covered the story: https://www.southwarknews.co.uk/news/camberwell-station-back-on-track-se5-forum-apply-for-restoring-your-railway-funding/

 Read our Press release below:

 SE5 Forum bid to governments Restoring Your Railway fund as campaign for Camberwell train station continues 

SE5 Forum for Camberwell, with backing from local MPs, Southwark Council and residents, leads initiative for re-opening Camberwell train station. 

The SE5 Forum has confirmed that it has submitted a bid for funding to the Restoring Your Railway programme run by the Department of Transport to build on the business case for re-opening Camberwell train station. A successful funding award from the New Ideas workstream would allow the business case for Camberwell Station to be refined, gain a better understanding of build costs and timetabling options, and provide early design work and invite local feedback. 

Helen Hayes, MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, says: “Along with my constituency neighbour Harriet Harman MP, I met with the Minister for Transport, presenting him with a petition signed by more than 2,000 of our constituents, asking for the train station to be re-opened. So we were both delighted to sponsor this SE5 Forum bid to Restoring Your Railway.”

The campaign had a major setback in 2018, when a study by TfL suggested that the local benefits would be outweighed by the impact on long distance commuters. However, more recently SE5 Forum has understood that Network Rail is undergoing a major strategy review of all its London services. In that context, SE5 Forum believes it would be possible to consider areas such as Camberwell not currently served by effective transport links.

Councillor Richard Livingstone, Cabinet Member for Environment, Transport and the Climate Emergency and Councillor Johnson Situ, Cabinet Member for Growth, Development and Planning, at Southwark Council, said: “We’re pleased to be match funding this important initiative and supporting SE5 Forum with their long standing campaign for better transport links in the area. We too hope that these works will drive the local economy and help to create jobs for local people.”

Southwark Council also successfully bid for £2m from the Mayor’s Good Growth fund to improve Station Road in Camberwell (where the old Camberwell train station was sited). SE5 Forum believes  there could be a multiplier effect from working up these initiatives at the same time, gaining even better outcomes for the area.

Barbara Pattinson, Chair of SE5 Forum, adds: “We would like the judges on the Restoring Your Railway award panel to know that Camberwell may be an inner city area, but the quality of transport and access is relatively poor. Helping us to develop the business case for re-opening Camberwell train station would put us on track for improving facilities which would really help local residents, as well as all the millions attending King’s College Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital.

Successful bidders to Restoring Your Railway funding will be announced in the autumn, so meanwhile SE5 Forum is asking its members and local residents and businesses to take to Twitter and other social media to show their ongoing support for Camberwell station.

SE5 Forum is a voluntary constituted group which works to improve the area and make Camberwell a better place to work and live. 

Restoring Your Railway/New Ideas , Department of Transport:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/re-opening-beeching-era-lines-and-stations/re-opening-beeching-era-lines-and-stations#ideas-fund

For further information please contact: Sophy Tayler, SE5 Forum Board Member, sophytayler@hotmail.com or Mobile: 07584 390712 or admin@se5forum.org.uk

SE5 Forum on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SE5Forum/status/1280190327052283910

www.se5forum.org.uk 

ATTACHED PDF: Restoring Your Railway bid by SE5 Forum for Camberwell plus appendices

IMAGE:
Helen Hayes MP for Dulwich and West Norwood and Harriet Harman MP for Camberwell and Peckham supporting the earlier SE5 Forum campaign for the train station. 

Timeline of Camberwell Train Station campaign since 2016:


What is the Restoring your Railways bid?

As part of the ongoing push for a station, at the beginning of 2020, SE5 Forum organised a meeting with Network Rail, which was a great opportunity to understand the process that railway planners are going through to develop a wider London Strategy. The hope is that this will create extra capacity, allowing Thameslink trains sufficient stopping time (an average of 90 seconds) at the new Camberwell Station

In May 2020, sponsored by our MPs Helen Hayes and Harriet Harman, we put in an Expression of Interest for funding to develop a train station Business Plan to the Department of Transport’s new Ideas fund of Restoring Your Railways Fund.  
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/re-opening-beeching-era-lines-and-stations/re-opening-beeching-era-lines-and-stations

We’ve now got to the next stage and, with the support of the London Borough of Southwark, have submitted a longer document explaining how we propose to develop our plans. We needed matched funding  and Southwark Council have been fantastic in earmarking enough cash so that we could outline plans for a comprehensive and compelling bid. 

Working through costs of complex engineering work is something that the next stage of work/planning really needs to look at. And it would mean we could develop high level plans for the station that everyone can comment on. 

Also, London Borough of Southwark has been granted funding from the Mayor’s Good Growth fund to improve Station Road. The railway arches are now owned by Archco, which is looking to bring in further investment. Taken altogether, it should be possible to look again at the economic benefits of a train station – not just for new housing, but also looking more widely at economic regeneration and employment.

The planning horizon for Network Rail, when thinking about stations and infrastructure, is decades. So we are looking well beyond the immediate issues of the Covid-19 crisis to the late 2020s for a possible opening date. 

What are our chances of getting the funding? 

An expert panel is reviewing all the bids, and we should hear in the autumn. Because it’s a rolling programme, we know that in the last funding round, there were 60 bidders, and 10 got awarded funding. There are 50 bidders this time round. We are slightly unusual, in that we are an inner city bidder, and that the bid is led by a community organisation.

Thanks for all your support! 

More Background Information: 

Government Press Release: Demand from England and Wales to Restore Beeching Lines as deadline for proposals closeshttps://www.gov.uk/government/news/demand-from-england-and-wales-to-restore-beeching-lines-as-deadline-for-proposals-closes